I'll bet that some of you are wondering why a film nudity
specialist is featuring a movie from the thirties, but you more savvy types realize
that there was some nudity in Hollywood in the early talkies. There were
censorship standards set way back in the silent era, established as early as
1922, but the original rules were voluntary and thus often ignored. The
so-called "Hays Code," an elaborately detailed production code consisting of
rules for what could and could not be portrayed on screen, was formalized in
1930, but originally lacked any teeth for enforcement. The voluntary compliance
(wink-wink!) era came to an end
in 1934 when the American Catholic church announced the creation of the Legion
of Decency, which encouraged the production of moral films and promptly
condemned any film with an immoral message or content. The Legion's activism hit
the film industry in two vulnerable areas. First, the Legion's threats to
boycott objectionable films went directly for the purse strings. Second, the
Legion threatened to lobby the federal government for official censorship. The
industry's leaders saw the handwriting on that wall. They knew the Legion could
exert a
powerful influence over politicians, and they realized that self-censorship was a far more attractive
alternative to draconian government interference, so they created a formal
procedure to administer the code. All films released after July 1, 1934, had to
get script approval before production could begin, and each film was later
required to obtain a "seal of approval." Failure to comply resulted in a $25,000
fine for the studio, and a distribution ban upon the non-compliant film.
Joseph Breen, new head of the Production Code Administration (which later became
the MPAA), was assigned to oversee the process.

The Production Code basically kept nudity out of American movies for
approximately the next thirty years. The Legion did not begin to lose its grip
on Hollywood until the early sixties when an unfinished 1962 film, Something's Got to Give, was
to have taken on the Code by featuring a skinny dip from Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn's death
temporarily scotched the snake of mainstream nudity, but other films soon took up
the baton.
Cleopatra featured a modest look at Liz Taylor's bum in 1963, and The Pawnbroker
managed to sneak fairly substantial nudity into arthouse theaters in 1964
despite a "condemned" rating from the Legion. Despite these efforts and a
rapidly liberalizing culture in the mid sixties, it was not until 1968 that the
Production Code was officially replaced with the
first version of the current
rating system.

But that's a story for another day. Today's tale concerns not
post-Code nudity, but the bit of flesh that snuck in here and there between the
adoption of the toothless Code in 1930 and its acquisition of teeth in July of
1934, a period representing four years of leftover 1920s hedonism. There were
the notorious Fay Wray scenes in King Kong (1933), Claudette Colbert's breasts
in The Sign of the Cross (1932), Myrna Loy's bath in The Barbarian (1933), full
frontal and rear underwater nudity from Maureen O'Sullivan's body double in
Tarzan and his Mate (1934), and Hedy Lamarr's notorious frontal nude scenes and
breast close-ups in the Czech-made Ecstasy (1932).

And then there was Delores Del
Rio's shapely bum in Bird of Paradise (1932), our subject for today.

There are two key bits of sexuality in this film. The first
is an erotic dance which a native Pacific islander (Del Rio) performs for her fellow
denizens of the South Seas,
while wearing only a lei on the top half of her body. Although the lei was firmly (and
unrealistically) affixed to her bosom, the dance was obviously sexual in nature,
and Del Rio's breasts were jiggling and almost exposed. The second sexy scene
featured actual nudity. Del Rio teases Joel McCrae (as a visiting
yachtsman) into joining her for a midnight swim. He strips down to very minimal
shorts, and she seems to be wearing nothing at all. Although the scene was
filmed underwater at night, there is no mistaking the sight of bare female
buttocks, so the scene could not have been included if the film had been made
two years later. Although the censorship era was about to dawn, this film
demonstrates that Hollywood seemed to be unconcerned with the Production Code rules in
1932, and so must have been the public in large part, as illustrated by the fact that Bird
of Paradise was not a German or Czech arthouse film, but a mainstream American
entertainment from RKO. It was produced by David O Selznick, who produced Gone
With the Wind. It was directed by King Vidor, who directed The Wizard of Oz.
That's as middle-American as it gets.

SPOILERS AHEAD

What about the movie?

Some upper-crust American sailors, dressed in their best
Princeton blazers, exhibiting their best finishing-school postures, and smoking
their most sophisticated pipes, maneuver their yacht into the harbor of a
stereotypical South Seas Island, where they are greeted by stock footage of
natives in exotic canoes. An enormous shark appears in the harbor, and the
handsomest young adventurer, played by Joel McCrae, is pulled overboard when the
shark attacks a wayward fishing line. McCrae's leg becomes tangled in a rope and
he is about to be drowned when a beautiful native girl (Delores Del Rio) cuts
the line and saves his sorry ass. He is immediately smitten, and decides to stay
on the island to court her while his colleagues sail off in their manly blue
blazers. Unfortunately for him, Del Rio can only marry a prince for some reason
or another and is therefore promised to the island's Big Kahuna, who seems to be
the only available royal candidate. McCrea's yachting pals had previously
counseled him to “run for Prince on the Democratic ticket,” but their cavalier
advice offered no practical help, so he ends up kidnapping her during a ritual
dance and spiriting her off to an uninhabited island where they start to play
house. The Kahuna eventually kidnaps her back and it's not long before both Del
Rio and McCrae are tied to palm trees, awaiting some fate worse than death, or
at least as bad. Meanwhile, the other yachting swells have realized that McCrae
might need their assistance, so they turn their schooner around and rescue the
star-crossed lovers before they can be consigned to whatever unpleasant fate the
islanders had prepared for them. Blah, blah. Islanders go batshit. Volcano
explodes. Yadda, yadda. To make a long story short, the only way there can be
peace between the islanders and the yachtsmen is if Del Rio agrees to jump in
the volcano as a sacrifice to the local Lava God. She does, and the film ends
with her self-sacrifice!

END SPOILERS

The film may have been eminently watchable in 1932, but it's
too quaint to stand modern scrutiny. You might be amused by its naiveté. The acting and musical styles come from an earlier time, and
the filming techniques are primitive. The boat used for exterior establishing
shots and the boat used for the deckside discussions are obviously not the same
ship. The "sailors" never get their spiffy blazers wet at any time. Del Rio
spends the entire film speaking obvious booga-booga gibberish or clumsily mispronouncing words when
she
attempts English. The dialogue supplies more than a few cringe-worthy
moments, especially when Skipper Johnson, Skeets, Mac, and the other blazer-clad
lads grasp their cigarette holders, polish their spats, down their drinks, and
discuss the "carefree" islanders.

Apart from the nudity, there is one other element of
historical interest. Future wolfman Lon Cheney Jr., then known as Creighton
Cheney, made one of his earliest appearances in this film, playing a bit part as one of
Skippy's crewmen. (Far right.) He is credited for his small part, but I don't
even remember hearing his distinctive voice.

The only thing worthwhile about the film, excluding the
elements with historical significance, is some impressive location footage which
was really lensed somewhere in the South Pacific. The actors actually
interact with waterfalls and coves, but not with the shark or the volcano, which
seem to come from stock footage. Stock or not, the shark is real and that seems
to be real lava flowing from a real exploding volcano. I assume those sights, so
familiar to us now from basic cable, were new and exotic sights for many
Americans in 1932.

DVD INFO

No features

NUDITY REPORT

see the main commentary

The
Critics Vote ...

There are no reviews available from major
print sources, but the IMDb page includes some interesting
reviews from internet-based sites.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

Our own
guideline:

A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.

B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better
is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at
least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial
success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with
good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the
critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also
assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the
box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of
the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people
had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)

C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of
movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are
indistinguishable to you.

C
means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who
like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others
probably will not.

C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film
rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of
film, but films with this rating should be approached with
caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent
or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C-
and an E are indistinguishable to you.

D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. We don't score films below C- that
often, because we like movies and we think that most of them
have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that,
you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.
Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor
popular acceptance.

E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre.

F means that the film is not only unappealing
across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this
film is a C. It is too quaint to
take seriously, but is worth a look for a few reasons:
historically significant nudity, a very young Lon Cheney Jr,
some impressive location shots, and a charming naiveté that
could never again be duplicated without irony.